Junior Fellowships 2021/2022 at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invites applications for its junior fellowships for the academic year 2021/2022.

The VWI is an academic institution dedicated to the research and documentation of antisemitism, racism, nationalism and the Holocaust. Conceived and established during Simon Wiesenthal’s lifetime, the VWI receives funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Federal Chancellery as well as the City of Vienna. Research at the institute focuses on the Holocaust in its European context, including its antecedents and its aftermath.

Ph.D. candidates from anywhere in the world are eligible to apply for a junior fellowship. Junior fellows will be able to work on a research project of their choice in the field of Holocaust studies at the institute. Beyond the research work itself, the stay at the institute is intended to encourage communication and scientific exchange among the fellows at the institute. Junior fellows will receive support and advice from the VWI as well as its senior and research fellows. Junior fellows are expected to regularly attend the VWI and take on an active role in the institute’s research activities.

Research projects are to focus on a topic relevant to the research interests of the VWI. Within this parameter, applicants are free to choose their own topic, approach and methodology. Fellows will have access to the archives of the institute. It is expected that fellows will make use of relevant resources from the collection in their research projects. Research results will be the subject of formal fellows' discussions and will be presented to the wider public at regular intervals. At the end of their stay, fellows are required to submit a short research paper which will be peer-reviewed and published in VWI‘s e-journal S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.

Junior fellowships are awarded for a duration of between six and eleven months. Junior fellows will have a work station at the VWI with computer and internet access and will receive a monthly stipend of € 1,200. In addition, junior fellows who are not Vienna residents will receive accommodation funding of € 340 per month. VWI will also cover the costs of a round-trip to and from Vienna (coach class airfare or 2nd class train fare). There is an additional one-off payment of € 500 available for research conducted outside of Vienna or photocopying costs outside of the institute, where applicable.

Junior fellows will be selected by the International Academic Advisory Board of the VWI.

Applications may be submitted in English or German and must include the following documents:

• completed application form,
• a detailed description of the research project, including the research objectives, an overview of existing research on the topic and methodology (12,000 character max.)
• two letters of recommendation (please indicate when sent separately),
• list of publications (if applicable),
• a CV (optional: with picture).

Please send your application in electronic format (in one integral *.pdf-file) with the subject header “VWI Junior Fellowships 2020/2021” by 27 January 2021 to:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you do not get confirmation that we have received your proposal, please contact us.

Future junior fellows are advised to endeavour to finance a part of their fellowship via a stipend from the Stipendienstiftung der Republik Österreich  and to submit an application to this end after they have received notification of being awarded their fellowship.

Junior Fellowships 2022/2023 at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invites applications for its junior fellowships for the academic year 2022/2023.

The VWI is an academic institution dedicated to the research and documentation of antisemitism, racism, nationalism and the Holocaust. Conceived and established during Simon Wiesenthal’s lifetime, the VWI receives funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Federal Chancellery as well as the City of Vienna. Research at the Institute focuses on the Holocaust in its European context, including its antecedents and its aftermath.

PhD-candidates from anywhere in the world are eligible to apply for a junior fellowship. Junior fellows will be able to work on a research project of their choice in the field of Holocaust studies at the Institute. Beyond the research work itself, the stay at the Institute is intended to encourage communication and scientific exchange among the fellows at the Institute. Junior fellows will receive support and advice from the VWI as well as its senior and research fellows. Junior fellows are expected to regularly attend the VWI and take on an active role in the Institute’s research activities.

Research projects are to focus on a topic relevant to the research interests of the VWI. Within this parameter, applicants are free to choose their own topic, approach and methodology. Fellows will have access to the archives of the Institute. It is expected that fellows will make use of relevant resources from the collection in their research projects. Research results will be the subject of formal fellows’ discussions and will be presented to the wider public at regular intervals. At the end of their stay, fellows are required to submit a research paper which will be peer-reviewed and published in VWI’s e-journal S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.

Junior fellowships are awarded for a duration of between six and eleven months. Experience tells that residencies between nine and eleven months are the most productive for facilitating the research of the fellows at the VWI. Junior fellows will have a working space at the VWI and Internet access and will receive a monthly stipend of € 1,200. In addition, junior fellows who are not Vienna residents will receive accommodation funding of € 340 per month. VWI will also cover the costs of a round-trip to and from Vienna (coach class airfare or 2nd class train fare). There is an additional one-off payment of € 500 available for research conducted outside of Vienna or photocopying costs outside of the Institute, where applicable.

Junior fellows will be selected by the International Academic Advisory Board of the VWI.

Applications may be submitted in English or German and must include the following documents:

• completed application form,
• a detailed description of the research project, including the objectives, an overview of existing research on the topic and methodology (12,000 character max.),
• two letters of recommendation (please indicate when sent separately),
• list of publications (if applicable),
• a CV (optional: with picture).

Please send your application in electronic format (in one integral *.pdf-file) with the subject header “VWI Junior Fellowships 2022/2023” by 14 January 2022 to:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you do not get confirmation that we have received your proposal, please contact us.

Future junior fellows are advised to endeavour to finance a part of their fellowship via a stipend from the Stipendienstiftung der Republik Österreichand to submit an application to this end after they have received notification of being awarded their fellowship.

Leo Gürtler

Junior Fellow (10/2016-08/2017)

Franz Stangl. A Biography

The Austrian police detective Franz Stangl had an astounding career during National Socialism: As a Gestapo agent, he was hired for the ‘Aktion T4’ programme and was active at the euthanasia killing-sites Hartheim. After that, he was appointed in the context of the ‘Aktion Reinhard’ first as commandant of Sobibor and finally as commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp. After 1945, he was able to flee via Syria to Brazil with the help of the Vatican. He was tracked down there by Simon Wiesenthal, was arrested in 1967, and extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany. He died in Düsseldorf prison after being found guilty at trial in 1970. The main goal of this dissertation project is to produce a comprehensive and nuanced biography of Franz Stangl as a historical and biographical case study, thereby to make a further contribution to contemporary historical biographical research and the research of perpetrators.

Leo Gürtler’s dissertation project is part of the research focus Diktaturen, Gewalt, Genozide (Dictatorships, Violence, and Genocides) at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, where he completed his Magister with the thesis Das Ghetto in Lublin 1941–42 (The Ghetto in Lublin 1941-42).

Sharon Park

Junior Fellow (10/2016-08/2017)

Narrating Humanitarian Aid to European Refugee Children after World War II, 1945–1953

Using age and gender as analytical lenses, this project examines the personal accounts of Jewish refugee children and youth who experienced and witnessed the distribution of international aid after the Second World War. It explores how refugee children's perspectives and understandings of their own agency can push back against the "official" narratives and expectations produced by state-level actors and social workers. Contemporaneous and retrospective accounts also provide insights into how young refugees’ experiences of persecution and antisemitism shaped their conceptions of citizenship, belonging, and democracy in relation to their former and new homes. In addition to social workers’ papers, questionnaires, and agency case files collected from archives in Austria, Germany, France, the U.K., and the U.S., this project works closely with oral history interviews in the Association of Jewish Refugees' "Refugee Stories" collection and the literature on child refugees in the VWI Library.

Sharon Park received her PhD in History at the University of Minnesota. Her work has focussed on Jewish child migrants’ personal narratives and the intersections between refugee and welfare policies in the United States after the Second World War. She also worked as an editorial assistant of the Austrian History Yearbook from 2013–2015.

Anna-Raphaela Schmitz

Junior Fellow (10/2016-04/2017)

Rudolf Höß. Behaviour, Relationships, and Private Life of a Concentration Camp Commandant

This dissertation project examines the personal networks and behaviour of Rudolf Höß and of the functional elite of the SS in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is conceived as a scholarly examination of the commandant from the various perspectives of diverse groups of people, embedding these into the social context of the Nazi regime. From everyday and microperspectives of Höß, this project examines the planning and execution of the Holocaust. Employing a biographical approach grounded in practice theory, it analyses the parameters given by the Nazi leadership on the one hand and the guiding principles and social interactions of the perpetrators in Auschwitz on the other hand. Thus, the interactions of the SS men as well as the connections on both institutional and personal levels both in and outside the camp walls will be presented in a network analysis.

Anna-Raphaela Schmitz is a PhD candidate at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and works as a research assistant at the Centre for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History. She completed her Magister in History and Political Science in 2010 at the University of Trier and received her M.A. in Holocaust Communication and Tolerance at Touro College, Berlin, in 2013. She was an EHRI Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and a participant in the EHRI Summer School in Holocaust Studies at the Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust en Genocidestudies (NIOD) in Amsterdam.

Filip Erdeljac
Junior Fellow (04/2016 - 08/2016)

Political Mobilisation and National Incoherence in World War II Croatia. Everyday Nationalism in the Yugoslav Kingdom, the Ustasha State and Communist Yugoslavia 1934-1948

By exploring how non-elites in Croatia during the interwar period, the Second World War and the immediate post-war years interpreted the national and political ideologies promoted by different movements, this project complicates our conventional understanding of the relationship between mass violence, collaboration and resistance in World War II Europe. Peasants and workers in Yugoslavia violently participated in mass politics and political violence while often lacking a clear understanding of the political ideologies they claimed to represent. My analysis of the politically and nationally incoherent behaviours that ordinary people frequently displayed provides new insights into the history of World War II Europe and re-evaluates the utility of classifying people from the period as either fascists or anti-fascists, collaborators or resistors, communists or anti-communists, victims or perpetrators.

Filip Erdeljac is a Ph.D. candidate at New York University working on “Political Mobilisation and National Incoherence in World War II Croatia: Everyday Nationalism in the Yugoslav Kingdom, the Ustasha State and Communist Yugoslavia, 1934-1948.” He has received support for his research and writing from the American Council of Learned Societies and the MacCracken Fellowship, in addition to several smaller grants.

Timm Ebner
Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 05/2016)

The colonial literature of National Socialism. Figures of the traitor ‘behind the scenes of world theatre’ Beginning from the loss of her colonies in the First World War until after the unconditional surrender of the ‘Third Reich’, German race ideology was characterised by a post-colonial situation strongly differing from the decolonisation processes of other colonial empires. This line-up also influenced antisemitic ideology which here will be examined in context with colonialism. Specimen for these examination will be the ‘völkisch’ and Nazi literature and films. Although the holdings in these field are immense – since these colonial topics boomed in the Nazi-era and were even more popular than in the times of the German colonial empire (alone between 1933 and 1945 more than 300 titles were published) -, they were widely neglected by historiography and cultural studies.

Timm Ebner, PhD at the Graduate School ‘Mediale Historiographien’ in Weimar/Erfurt/Jena in 2015, later working as a journalist, after that studies literature, modern history and philosophy at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin) and at Freie Universität (Berlin).

Caroline Cormier

Junior Fellow (04/2017 - 08/2017)

From Disenfranchisement to Displacement. The History and Commemoration of Jewish Homes and ‘Judenhäuser’ in Germany

This project examines the large-scale disruption to Jewish homes that took place in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Specifically, this research explores the displacement of Jews from their private resi-dences and their forced relocation into Nazi-designated ‘Jew Houses’ (Judenhäuser) in three of Germany’s major cities: Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg. Using contemporary memorials as a starting point, this study combines archival research with testimony from survivors, their heirs, and the post-war inhabitants of these sites to expand the visibility of the wartime histories and ongoing preservation efforts of these formerly Jewish living spaces.

Caroline Cormier is currently a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto, where she also received her M.A. in Geography and Planning in 2010. She received her B.A. (Honours) from Queen’s University in 2008. Past program participation includes: the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, the Holocaust Education Foundation Summer Institute, and the Zoryan Institute’s International Genocide and Human Rights Program. She is also a recipient of the Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies.

Susanne Barth

Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 05/2013)

The Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG and the Auschwitz Subcamp of Blechhammer 1939-1945

Based on newly accessible source material, this project investigates the history of the Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG, a synthetic fuel plant founded in Blechhammer (Upper Silesia) by the Reich Office for Economic Development in 1939. Along with nearly 20,000 foreign and forced labourers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe and Allied prisoners of war, Jewish inmates were made to work on the construction site. A forced labour camp for Jews was set up by the Reichsautobahn in March 1942. When it was taken over by Auschwitz in April 1944, it became its second-largest subcamp with a prisoner population of 4,000-6,000. This project examines the plant’s ideological and economic function in war-time Upper Silesia as well as the industrial elite’s co-operation with the Schmelt organisation and the Auschwitz extermination camp, while at the same time trying to reconstruct the daily life and suffering of Blechhammer prisoners.

Susanne Barth is a PhD candidate at the University of Oldenburg (Germany), from where she also received a Master’s degree in History and Political Science. In 2012, she was an EHRI-Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam and a Saul Kagan Claims Conference Academic Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies in 2012-13. Her main research interests are forced labour and social histories of the camps.

Laura Almagor

Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 08/2016)

A Forgotten Path. Jewish Territorialism as a Movement of Political Action and Ideology 1905-1960

The research project deals with the history of Jewish Territorialism as a movement of political action and thought and, more broadly, as an alternative Jewish way of becoming national during the first half of the twentieth century. The Jewish Territorialists, first organised in 1905 and represented during the interwar and post-war periods by the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation, searched for places of settlement for Jews outside Palestine. Even though it did influence the Freeland League's post-war endeavours, the Holocaust did not constitute a watershed moment for the organisation's aims and ambitions. From its very foundation, the movement's members had voiced explicit concerns about the threat that increasing European antisemitism posed to Jewish lives, culture and tradition. This study of Territorialist history aims to shed new light on the richness of twentieth century Jewish politics, as well as on the contemporary global debates that defined these politics.

Laura Almagor is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in Florence and was a visiting researcher at UCLA's History Department, as well as a fellow in the 20th Summer Institute of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. Previously, she was affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Military History. She has published on Jewish history, Dutch military history, and Second World War remembrance culture.